The debate over extending full civil rights to British and Irish Catholics not only preoccupied British politics but also informed the romantic period's most prominent literary works. This book offers the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary study of Catholic Emancipation, one of the romantic period's most contentious issues.

Firmly I Believe and Truly celebrates the depth and breadth of the spiritual, literary, and intellectual heritage of the Post-Reformation English Roman Catholic tradition in an anthology of writings that span a five hundred year period between William Caxton and Cardinal Hume. Intended as a rich resource for all with an interest in Roman Catholicism, the writings have been carefully selected and edited by a team of scholars with historical, theological, and literary expertise. Each author is introduced to provide context for the included extracts and the chronological arrangement of the...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's conception of "the willing suspension of disbelief" marks a pivotal moment in the history of literary theory. Returning to Coleridge's thought and Shakespeare criticism to reconstruct this idea as a form of "poetic faith," Michael Tomko here lays the foundations of a new theologically oriented mode of literary criticism. Bringing Coleridge into dialogue with thinkers ranging from Augustine to Josef Pieper, contemporary critics such as Stephen Greenblatt and Terry Eagleton as well as writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and Wendell Berry, Beyond the Willing Suspension of...